Jewish Brigade

Jewish Brigade insignia

Jewish Brigade tag

The Jewish Brigade (in English by its official name: Jewish Brigade Group, and in Hebrew also known as the "Jewish Combat Brigade" or by its acronym, "Hayi'el", as well as the "Hebrew Brigade", and by many, abbreviated as "the Brigade" [ "חטיבה יהודית לוחמת" או בראשי התיבות, "חַיִ"ל", וכן בשם "הבריגדה העברית", ובפי רבים, בקיצור "הבריגדה]) was a brigade in the British Army that was composed It was entirely made up of Jews, mainly from the Yishuv's people from Israel at Mandatory Palestine, as part of the Yishuv's volunteering for the British army in World War II. Britain agreed to (Jews' repeated requesrs) establish it only towards the end of World War II - in July 1944. One of the initiators of its establishment was Moshe Sharett, the head of the Jewish Agency's political department Great national importance. This was the first British military division in the Second World War, whose soldiers and commanders were only Jews from the Land of Israel, with a Hebrew identity and Zionist symbols, which participated in the war against Nazi Germany.

It was following a long and tedious correspondence between Winston Churchill and Chaim Weitzmann.

The efforts by Zionist leaders: Weizmann, Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky to form the Jewish Army (though hundreds of thousands of Jews fought within Allies' armies) to fight Hitler, Nazis, began as early as 1940, within months of beginning of WW2.

Explained:

Due to Arab opposition to the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine, the British initially refused to establish a separate fighting unit of Jewish volunteers from Palestine. However, wartime manpower requirements and the strategic need to defend the Middle East induced the British to permit the formation of 15 Palestinian Jewish battalions. These units were incorporated into the British army in September 1940.

Jewish units fought with the Allies in Greece in 1941; 100 Palestinian Jews were killed there and 1,700 captured by the Germans. On August 6, 1942, the British army formed a Palestine Regiment out of three Jewish and one Palestinian Arab battalion. The regiment fought in Egypt and in the battles of North Africa.

The Jewish Brigade Group of the British army, which fought under the Zionist flag, was formally established in September 1944. It included more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine organized into three infantry battalions and several supporting units. Under the command of Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, the Jewish Brigade fought against the Germans in Italy from March 1945 until the end of the war in May 1945.

After the German surrender, the Jewish Brigade was stationed along the Italian border with Austria and Yugoslavia, and later in Belgium and the Netherlands. Some soldiers from the Brigade helped create displaced persons camps for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Brigade members also became involved in organizing the flight of Jewish refugees from eastern Europe and their clandestine entry into Palestine. Individual soldiers acquired arms for the Hagana, the major Jewish underground defense organization in Palestine.

Britain disbanded the Jewish Brigade Group in the summer of 1946. Some 30,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine served with the British forces during World War II. More than 700 were killed during active duty.

The Nazi-Arab Operation Atlas - accelerated.

Nazi-Arab 'Operation Atlas'

Author:

On 19 September 1944, following a long and tedious correspondence between Winston Churchill and Chaim Weizmann, the British government decided to establish a Jewish Brigade as part of the British army. The Brigade recruits would be mostly Palestinian Jews. The news threw the Mufti into a terrible rage. Here he was in Germany l, having been trying for years to form the nucleus of an Arab liberation army, and finally the British were stealing his idea and creating a Jewish Brigade ! He besieged the German leaders, especially von Ribbentrop and Himmler, demanding an immediate German declaration about the creation of an Arab army.

The government of the Reich decided to placate the Mufti and make the announcement of the creation of an Arab Brigade on 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Himmler and von Ribbentrop sent the Mufti letters to that effect, and the High Command was instructed to follow up the declaration with a military operation which would prove that the Arab army was already in operation which would prove that the Arab army was already in action. The Mufti's long-forgotten project to instigate an Arab uprising in Palestine was hurriedly recovered from the archives and an operational plan was recovered from the archives and an operational plan was swiftly concocted.

The "Nazis and Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, planned and executed a commando mission whose primary objective was killing Jews in the land of Israel. The five men who were parachuted into Palestine had all lived there for much of their lives and knew the territory well. Their plan was to incite Palestinian Arabs against Jews and to attack individual Jewish targets, such as synagogues and Jewish-owned stores. The operation was codenamed Atlas and took place in October 1944. This is the story of an event that has been all but lost to history, but which casts important light on the global dimensions of Nazi war planning—and the key role played by their willing accomplices."

According to some versions, the plot was to poison the 250,000 residents of Tel-Aviv by contaminating the water with chemicals.

"It was a grandiose plan in which German and Arab commandos would parachute into Palestine and poison Tel Aviv's water supply in order to kill as many Jews as possible , rousing the country's Arabs to fight a holy war against the British occupiers. It failed miserably when the British, having cracked the Nazis' Enigma code, captured Salameh and four others after they dropped into a desert ravine near Jericho on October 6, 1944."

Earlier rejection of a Jewish army of 200,000=

The plan for a "Jewish Army" of 200,000 Jews, proposed by the Zionist Organization 1940-1944, was rejected by the British government.

See also

• Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler